[Tutor] Potential problem with Game Over 2.0 problem in "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 3rd Ed."

[Joel Goldstick]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 4:05 PM, boB Stepp <robertvstepp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 1:47 PM, Dave Angel <davea at davea.name> wrote:
>> On 02/17/2015 02:12 PM, boB Stepp wrote:
>>
>> See
>> https://docs.python.org/3.4/reference/lexical_analysis.html#string-and-bytes-literals
>>>
>>>
>>> At this point in the text he is not talking about raw literal strings.
>>> I examined the author's source and he has obviously inserted at least
>>> one space between each use of a backslash at the end of a line and the
>>> EOL terminating characters.
>>
>>
>> Then he's teaching you wrong. Backslash followed by space is not a valid
>> escape sequence, and to do it at the end of line is particularly odious.  I
>> wouldn't even suggest it in real code, never mind in something that's
>> published on paper.
>
> I guess I am inclined to cut the author some slack here. The point of
> his example was NOT to teach escape sequences, but instead show how
> using keyboard characters you could create a text picture, in this
> instance of a large "Game Over". He at this point was talking about
> the print function used with quotes and triple quotes. A little bit
> later in this same chapter he talks about escape sequences. The point
> of my original post was to point out that because the author is using
> a backslash as part of his ASCII art, that unintended consequences
> might result. I will admit that I was surprised that the author did
> not think of this potential issue and warn the reader of possible
> problems, especially as the book is aimed at total beginners. But I
> suppose it is difficult to anticipate all possible problems. But sure
> enough, my son stumbled into this one!
>
> [...]
>
>> I would never intentionally make any trailing whitespace in source code be
>> significant.  And years ago I used an editor that routinely deleted any such
>> invisible characters.  From the rest of your message, it looks like IDLE may
>> have that behavior.
>
> This seems to be the case. On a related note, I wanted to copy and
> paste the author's source code, showing how he generated the large,
> "Game Over", but my Gmail keeps collapsing the white space, making the
> result look like gibberish. So far I cannot find a setting to
> eliminate this undesired behavior. Argh!

Do you have gmail set to plain text mode?
> --
> boB
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-- 
Joel Goldstick
http://joelgoldstick.com